# Dan Goron - Future of Staking in Ethereum Protocol

- Channel: [ETHCluj Meetup](https://streameth.org/ethcluj-meetup)
- Date: 2025-11-09
- Duration: 22:59
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-6_0zoENLV58
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_0zoENLV58

## Description

"Future of staking" is a term we use to refer to the broad umbrella of questions around Issuance, Delegation, rainbow staking, APS, FOCIL etc.

The talk takes the audience trough these topics, pointing to their relevance and impact on the broader Ethereum staking scene, backed up by research reference and community discussions.

## Transcript

Hello everyone. I'm uh Dan. Um my presentation is actually about the future of uh staking in Ethereum protocol. known and uh unknowns I called it because there are actually things uh that reflect also my own personal uh questions into how the protocol is going to develop and how that will affect uh the way we think about uh staking. Uh I am an ESP grantee actually I work on a thing that's uh uh that's called dele operator delegator uh uh separation which basically could introduce delegations in Ethereum at protocol level is not something that's uh an EIP yet it's just something that we're preparing to present uh to community um and yeah let's go into the presentation So most of the ideas that uh I uh put in the presentation originate in uh in R&D uh discussions and in community discussions uh regarding what's what's in the what's in it for uh uh in the Ethereum road map. But as I said, it's also like has a touch of personal view because it's because of the unknowns. So, uh if it doesn't happen the way uh I present it, then it's because it it will happen differently. Let's see. Let's go treat. Oh, and I I dropped some uh links for people that want to go a bit uh uh deeper into uh the topic, some resources. Okay. Okay, for uh starters, let's uh recap a bit what is uh uh the value proposition of Ethereum. And in my opinion, it's Ethereum sells permissionless uh access to programmable block space that's characterized by uh credible neutrality. That's a big one. Censorship resistance going to be a big one. and what we discussed uh earlier with uh uh the lady presenting interoperability, livveness and availability. Okay. In order to in order to achieve all that uh Ethereum relies on a consensus protocol that is called uh proof of stake. As we know after the merge, Ethereum switched from proof of work to to something that brings consensus among uh participants in the uh that execute the protocol and that implies staking. So we know at least that uh proof of stake it's here to stay. I don't think Ethereum will switch to another consensus protocol anytime soon. Okay. So staking being indispensable to proof of stake and staking uh and proof of stake not going anywhere anytime soon. We can safely conclude that staking has a future but protocol is always improving constantly upgrading. there is the endgame of the road map that uh Justin Drake's beam chain proposal uh predicts in about 5 to seven years we might enter maintenance and then think about oification. So there are plenty of uh of upgrades that could first of all change the the the protocol but bring a lot of better uh things. Uh and those upgrades needed need to be uh are are needed to be implemented gradually uh before beam chain and then think about going into maintenance. And this uh uh uh uh this uh improvements uh number uh better service, better and cooler tech and better staking economics. Now how this how will uh these changes uh how will these changes influence uh protocol participation? That's basically the main goal I want to achieve with uh with this discussion because we know the the known ones, we do not know the unknown ones. We can debate about it. Okay. So I bundled the protocol the main protocol improvements in some buckets that I uh very gracefully stuffed under the staking of future of staking umbrella. First bucket is better service. Uh we're going to have lower fees actually already happening with uh blobs. Um improved UX but technically improved UX means that we need to finalize or to make our transactions or the the the protocols transactions much more uh faster. I mean we need to make them immutable much more faster. that means faster finality and uh also slot uh shorter slot times. There was an ACD call yesterday that uh uh was actually proposing uh we had Barnaby Mono proposing six seconds slot. How uh are these uh things influencing uh staking? Well, first of all, for faster finality, we need a smaller validator set. And that's due to BLS uh uh aggregation u limitations like technical limitations. we cannot aggregate more BLS signatures than um I I think it's an it's a certain number a big number but still it's not enough to take into account all validators or or u take into account all protocol participants that could uh participate uh at once. So we kind of need to move away from the syntax that everybody needs to attest simultaneously every slot. So there are two main paths uh considered for a smaller validator set and that's capping the validator set where only validators above a certain uh uh stake uh threshold uh would be considered active by the protocol and then everything below that threshold would be considered inactive. So validator would just but in protocolized validators would just switch from active to inactive depending on the um uh on the stakes on the stake. Uh that is that is uh not committee based. So everybody will vote at once. So whoever makes the threshold vote at once every slot. Second P consider its orbit SSF which would lower the participation uh barrier very much to all the way down to one for it uh like introduce a minimum effective uh balance and whoever uh has that balance at stake can participate with the with a clarification that uh the protocol would take input a lot more um a lot more um a lot more times from the uh from the uh heavier staked ones and lesser staked ones would offer their input to the protocol or their votes um you know more rarely. Okay, what's interesting uh for me and basically that's the conclusion uh my conclusion for this uh first bucket is that both this uh uh pets consider optimize the protocol for home operators. So we're not I think home operator is something that we're going to talk a lot more in the future more like more than solo stakers. So home operators they operate their own rigs. It's like you and me. It's like you and me having one ETH and participating and getting delegated stake from delegators uh straight in the protocol and then once we reach a minimum threshold we get uh to to execute uh to validate uh the chain. But also for indirect uh uh also for direct consolidation like solo stakers. you have your 32 and then uh uh you start uh you start validating. Um so again it's not it seems that we're not going towards an incentiv incentivization of big operators but more on less smaller operators. Okay. Second bucket is better and cooler tech. We have a chase notification that uh seems to be the way to go. Uh like ZKVM means that we could execute thousands and thousands of transactions offchain then only send onchain a snark. That's basically a proof that all the transactions were valid and then Ethereum gets that uh snark uh snarification of the beacon chain something again that beam chain um there's another uh alternative but beam chain has a narification uh proposal means that validators do not get to rerun all the consensus um logic just to uh validate date you basically get a snark and uh that snark attests that the consensus rules were followed correctly and basically uh that's it you can validate on that uh I'm going to talk more on this um in the influence over staking second point is uh and this is one of my favorites uh unbundling of the validator role so we're going to most likely see a lot of special uh specialization like fossil inclusion lists uh fossil already introduces the new protocol role of includers. We don't have includers now. We're going to have includers if gets uh uh implemented. Uh we have a tester proposer separation proposer builder separation. We're definitely going into a direction of separating what validator means at this point and thinking very differently about this. How is how is taking uh influence? Well, uh regarding the first one, even your smartwatch is going to be able to safely verify the chain with with ZK proof. And that's not magic or dark magic. That's uh I think something real that means connected with the previous uh ideas that we will be able to participate a lot more in protocol with a lot a lot less e uh okay the only notable cost if that happens is the stake itself because the rig cost would be like you can use your older laptop or your watch. Second one is the uh regarding dumbbundling. Uh we we're going to have most likely new protocol services and new protocol roles with uh and we we will most likely assist the r to the rise of the light uh the light validator. Light validators performing light services for the protocol. Light services being anything that's not strictly related to finality. uh censorship resistance for sale. Uh what else? Um seeing committee could be a role. So anything that's not strictly related to finalizing the chain could be operated by a light uh could be a light service and operated by a light uh validator. Third bucket, it's a better staking economics. Yeah, the first one it's a tricky one because uh discussions about issuance is always difficult. So uh most likely again we see how how uh bean chain proposal is going to implement uh but basically and and this is an older discussion basically we are going to discuss pretty soon I think about limiting the issuance curve from 2% where it is now so at this point all validators get at least 2% issuance regardless of how much e is stake staked if I'm not mistaken and that neutering that uh that curve would mean that after a certain threshold of ETH is staked that would go very fast to zero meaning basically burn would overcome issuance and it holders would capture the fees. I'm going to talk more on this in the second part of the panel. Second one is removing the risks afferent to liquid staking. We had uh the colleagueu with the defy uh decentralization a bit earlier and and uh staking platforms do bring with their u contract and deposit contracts and governance contracts. They do bring a lot of risks uh in protocol because it they they bring their own assumptions and they weaken the protocol's credible neutrality influence overstaking. Yes. So once once you get the curve uh to go to zero after towards zero after a certain certain ETH threshold being staked then big operators would no longer be so incentivized to participate or there's no no more I mean today uh it's considered rational behavior to stake you have it's rational to think yeah I'm going to stake. I'm going to capture that issuance by providing good services to the protocol. In the future, we might see a world where it's enough to hold your stake and capture all the fees in your asset because staking would not be so well paid. And then you could have small operators participating altruistically, even big operators. Anybody from uh operators here? I don't think so. I wanted to ask them if they're going to participate with zero issues. Yeah. Okay. Um, second one is something that's also related to to my protocol work. Again, it's not something that's uh that's yet uh accepted by the community. We're in the works. But basically if we get smaller operators uh with less ETH to participate we could validate lighter uh lighter services we could get delegated. So my personal opinion that is that we need a good delegation framework in protocol not outside protocol if implementing that does not bring too much complexity and that's going to be debated and discussed in community. Okay, conclusions. We know Ethereum is ready to ship major upgrades in the short to medium term. We know these breakthroughs will most likely change the way we think uh about staking in a positive way. I would say again don't take my words for it if it doesn't happen like that. Uh how will proto protocol participation uh morph? How will we how will the the the validator selection mechanisms be built in such a way that they're both fair and and offer desired service like single slot finality. So if you're going to limit to just a small validator set, what do we do with the others? Okay. Will users hold, stake, delegate? Probably all of them. And my favorite question, will we be staking in the future altruistically? Like I hold ETH, everything numbers go up. Do I stake? Do I not stake? I stake because I want the the service to be I want the protocol to be safe. I want it to be decentralized. I want to bring my own voice. Even if it's a small node, doesn't matter. I'm one of the most decentralized uh guys out there. So yeah, that's it. There's the presentation. [Applause] >> Thank you so much, Dan. And we actually just made the steak a little bit more colorful because I personally didn't know a lot about that with the new staking. I remember when they went from the farming over to the staking and everybody was discarding all the farming materials for Eve. It was a massive chaos. Yeah. >> Well, if if the issuance curve ever gets uh modified, that's going to affect some uh big operator services. So, we're going to see how that works. >> Yeah, I know. Sometimes >> there's always a way and there's always the way to choose for resilience instead of profit. >> Yeah. And the thing is right now, remember the last bull run when you have a transaction going through, you had to pay like $150 just to get one through to earn $20 >> ju just to get one >> just to get one transaction too with the high gas fees and everything. All the validators like >> $120 to get $20 out at one point. >> It was crazy. >> Yeah. Well, things things change a lot with L2. Yeah. >> Oh, it's much better. Like now it's $2. I'm so happy. So, do we have any questions from the audience here today? I see everybody's Oh, we have one right down here. >> Um, my question will be in the direction of if we ever get to the point in which the issuance is so close to zero% and we want to uh incentivize uh it holders to stake their ET for an altruistic reason. We kind of need to educate them to know what's happening if they don't. So what would what should we tell them that if they don't stake their ether what's going to happen? Currently currently I think the percent of solo stakers so at the moment solo stakers are the most decentralized pool of validators we have and the you know the most decentralized voice in the protocol. I think they're 5% or something like that. So even though in small num it's not small numbers it's a small percent but there are a few thousands maybe seven eight thousands even in small numbers there my opinion is that there will always be uh protocol participants uh altruistically altruistic enough to do this for a lower profit but again if you have delegation uh in protocol so if you take the risks of LSD and delegation. I mean you have you have then you have one ETH and you participate in light services and by the way I forgot to say that ETH that you participate in light services will not be special because it's not finality so it will be draw anytime it's available and you put it out so US so you just take one heat and then say okay I can I get some delegations to get to whatever minimum threshold it is to at least white and if I get above 50 I can finality but if it it will not be zero it will be zero once you go I go above 50% but it will go towards zero meaning that the protocol will not incentivize holders to pay for security too much to sters so basically you inverse the dynamic. So let's see your question. I think there will be enough artistic nodes to take on this job without so much and even characters who have a lot of eth would maybe just to have a voice in because they do have the so they have they capture the board in their assets basically so they don't have to stay to make profit they don't going to or stake just keep their chain that makes everything possible. >> Perfect. Any others have some questions because I know I want to know the APY. >> I want to know the APY. >> What APY? >> APR. >> Exactly. You always want the return on your investment, right? So if we don't have any more questions from the audience, I want to say so much thank you for Dan to going through how everything on the ETH network is working. Thank you everybody. Give him a big hand.